


Write Me a Beacon

by lady_ragnell



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Gen, Pre-Slash, See notes for warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-06
Updated: 2012-10-06
Packaged: 2017-11-15 17:53:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles will keep his father alive by any means necessary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Write Me a Beacon

**Author's Note:**

> I woke up with this fic in my head and had to get it down before I could work on any of the things I'm actually meant to be working on.
> 
> Warnings are in the end notes because they are spoilery for the fic, but I would recommend reading them first if you are at all worried! This is not a happy fic.
> 
> Title from the song "Nostalgia," done by Emily Barker.

It’s a robbery. A stupid human robbery and a stupid human bullet and the house phone is ringing at two in the morning and the phone only rings when it’s bad news. Stiles answers anyway.

“Stiles,” says Zelda from dispatch, in that way-too-calming tone of voice, “there was an altercation at the gas station and your father’s been injured. He’s on his way to the Emergency Room and said we should call you right away.”

That’s one of their deals, that Stiles’s dad doesn’t try to protect him by making bad news wait until morning. It’s better than he was expecting, though—he’s still alive. “I’ll be there in fifteen.” It’s a twenty-minute drive, but the cops all know his Jeep and they’ll know not to pull it over.

“Are you okay to drive?” Zelda asks.

“I’ll be there in fifteen,” Stiles repeats, and hangs up.

*

Stiles is in his pajamas and a pair of his dad’s boots in the hospital waiting room at ten in the morning. His phone’s been ringing since eight, but he thinks the battery died twenty minutes ago because it stopped. There’s a doctor explaining the situation in a way that he probably thinks is going over Stiles’s head, but Stiles knows how to translate, after his mom, and he knows that “keeping him in the ICU” and “medically induced coma” and “of course, with the heart problems that he already has” don’t add up to anything good.

“Is he dying?” he interrupts when he thinks he understands.

The doctor—he’s wearing a nametag, Stiles just can’t bother remembering his name right now—shifts, uncomfortable. “The next twenty-four hours are very important to his case, with his organs in distress as they are.” That’s not an answer, and Stiles and the doctor both know it. “If we can stabilize him, he has a chance,” the doctor finally admits, “but as you can tell we’re having trouble with that. You have options in case of—”

Stiles knows his options. His dad has a living will (which Stiles is pretty sure he’s going to ignore, if it says what he thinks it does), he looks things up on his worse nights, and on top of that he knows a few options that other people don’t, these days. “Yeah, I know.”

*

Mrs. McCall finds him around eleven, sitting by his dad’s bed with his head in his hands, listening to the way the monitors can’t keep steady for too long. “Jesus, Stiles, I just got on shift and they told me you were here, why didn’t you call?”

Stiles blinks, coming out of his head. “Sorry, I just … I forgot, I guess. I should call Scott, he called a bunch earlier before my phone died.” Odds are even that he’s freaking out and thinking about skipping class, but that depends on how he and Allison are doing today. “Hey, do you know if they got the guy that shot him?” He’s pretty sure someone told him sometime around dawn, one of the officers hanging around waiting for word, but he can’t keep it in his head.

“They got him. Burglary, assaulting an officer, a few other charges. Stiles, are you …” She stops and doesn’t say “okay.”

He puts on the brave-little-toaster face anyway, the one he did for everyone when his mom was dying that everyone can see through and nobody dares do anything about. “I’m fine. I’m … I mean, as good as can be expected. Or something. I haven’t brushed my teeth today, and the vending machine is out of Twizzlers and I missed my Adderall dose for today and—”

“Yeah, I get it.” She crouches in front of his chair, and that’s how he knows it’s _bad_. “Nothing’s going to happen in the next few hours. He’s on life support, and even if something goes wrong, that will keep him alive until you get back. Go, get dressed, eat something, pack a bag because I know you won’t want to leave much until we know one way or the other.” Stiles starts to shake his head, but she squeezes his knee. “I’ll take care of him for a little while.”

Stiles breathes out. “There’s something I have to do, someone I have to see. In case.” Her eyes narrow, and he figures he may as well tell her, in case he comes back to the hospital with a guest in tow. “I need to see Derek.”

That makes her wince back like he surprised her, but it’s all he’s been able to think about for the last hour. “Stiles … I know you don’t want him to die, but do you think that’s what he would want?”

“I’d rather have him alive, even if it means he hates me. I’d always rather have him alive.”

“Kiddo,” she says on a sigh, but she stops. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, but I’m not going to stop you. Are you okay to drive?”

“Sure, yeah.” Stiles clenches his hands to hide the shakes.

He isn’t fooling her, because she stands up and shakes him gently by the shoulders. “Be careful. I don’t want you both laid up in here, you understand me?” He nods. “I’ll call Scott during his lunch break and tell him what’s—”

“Don’t tell him I’m going to see Derek,” he interrupts, too loud. Scott will try to stop him, argue that death is better than the bite, maybe, and Stiles can’t listen to that right now, not until it’s already done. “Tell him whatever, just not that.”

Before she can tell him whether she will or not, he’s out the door, fumbling in his pocket for his keys, shoving past the doctor who tries to stop him on his way out of the ICU.

*

Outside of the hospital, reality intervenes. Back when his mom was sick, what happened in the hospitals never seemed real to him, the blank white walls and the weird noises and the words he didn’t understand like a dream. More recently, his time outside Lydia’s hospital room felt removed from everything, like a weird sort of respite in between the mess his life is now. His lack of sleep and the fact that he’s had literal nightmares about days like today have added up to a feeling of surreality, but out in the sunshine on a gorgeous California day, it’s harder to ignore.

Stiles sits in the Jeep and breathes into his fist in the parking lot for ten minutes, until he’s stopped shaking enough to turn the key and put his foot on the gas, speeding for the edge of town and the train depot where Derek is still lurking these days.

“I need to talk to you,” he shouts before he’s even out of the car.

They’re making progress: Derek meets him at the door instead of making him search the place, even though he still looks murderous. “What the hell do you want, Stiles?”

Stiles swallows hard. He’s sure, surer than he maybe should be when he knows his dad won’t ever forgive him for this. If he lives. When he lives. “I need a favor.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “More advice for Scott? He’s made his position pretty clear.”

“No, for me.” He’s aware of every breath, and maybe Derek is too, because he goes predator-still, nostrils flaring like he’s just realized Stiles is on the edge of panic, stinking of hospital and maybe blood, sleepless and wearing pajamas and only not shaking because he’s riding the adrenaline now. “My dad’s in the hospital.”

It’s like he can see Derek’s thought process, shuffling past _what does that have to do with me_ into _maybe a werewolf put him there_. “Animal attack? Do you think it’s one of us?”

Stiles shakes his head. “Robber.” Before Derek can open his mouth, he just says it. “He’s dying. He’s going to die. The doctors are pretending to be optimistic, but I know what it’s like. I want you to bite him.”

“What?” He doesn’t think he’s ever heard Derek surprised before. It would be funny, any other time. “Stiles—”

“He’s dying.” He can’t stop saying it, thinking it, now that he’s acknowledged it out loud. “Unless there’s a miracle, he’s dying, and werewolves are the closest thing to a miracle I have handy.” Derek shakes his head, and Stiles swallows again. “Please. He’s the only family I’ve got left.”

Derek runs a hand through his hair, face evening out back to blank. “I can’t just—”

Stiles squares his jaw and meets Derek’s eyes dead on, doesn’t give him an inch to look away. “He’s the only family I’ve got left, and you _know how that feels_. Help me.”

Derek flinches back, and Stiles knows that was a cruel thing to say, but he can’t bring himself to care. “It’s not as simple as that,” he says after a second. “Even if I did bite him, the older someone is the more likely the bite will kill him, and even if he does survive and turn, he’ll have a hard time adjusting.”

“He’s dying either way.” He coded three times before they let Stiles see him. He’ll probably do it again, despite the machines, while Stiles is gone. “If he … if the bite kills him, I’m not going to blame you, because you tried, and this is a bigger chance than what he’s got on his own. And if he has a hard time adjusting, at least he’ll be alive.” God, he doesn’t want to do this, but he knew he might have to, spent twenty minutes by his dad’s bed coming up with all the reasons he would be an asset to the pack. “It’ll help the pack, having the sheriff involved, and he’ll be a stable, adult influence that’s not, you know, Peter, and—”

“You don’t need to give me reasons, Stiles. I just want you to know that chances are this won’t work.”

“Anything that …” Stiles stops, throat dry, voice running out, and then forces himself to finish. “Anything that happens from here on out is my fault.”

*

Derek makes him go home first, tells him pretty much the same thing Mrs. McCall did: get dressed, eat. Stiles rushes through the shower, puts on his most comfortable clothes, and eats a sandwich while he drives. Derek still beats him to the hospital, leaning against the Camaro in the parking lot until Stiles pulls in next to him. “Are you sure?” he asks when Stiles gets out.

“I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t.” Stiles walks towards the door and knows Derek is following him. “Mrs. McCall knows you’re coming, and I can get you in if I pull the needing emotional support card. She can buy us a minute so you can do your thing.”

“Okay.” He doesn’t know what Derek is thinking, can’t really make himself care, because Derek is the only hope he’s got right now and he doesn’t need to feel guilty about it from both sides. He thinks, though, that maybe Derek gets it. If a bite could have saved Laura, could have given him back the uncle he knew instead of the facsimile he has right now, he would have done it.

When they reach the ICU, the nurse nods sadly at Stiles but tries to stop Derek. “Family only, I’m sorry. You can stay in the—”

Stiles wraps his fingers around Derek’s arm, feeling his knuckles go white. “Please, I need someone, I know it’s not regulation, but can’t he come in for at least a couple minutes?”

“It’s okay, Christine,” says Mrs. McCall from down the hall. “I know him, I’ll walk him to the sheriff’s room and make sure he doesn’t stay too long.” When Stiles looks at her, her mouth is tight and she won’t meet his eyes, but she’s standing up straight, and she’s not stopping him. She understands, he thinks—if Scott weren’t already a werewolf and it were him on that table, she would do it. “Stiles, Derek, come on.”

They follow her down the hall, past the other families there for visiting hours, all of whom watch as Stiles goes by, still holding Derek’s wrist because by now he’s not sure if he can let go. She stops in the doorway. His dad looks even grayer and smaller on the bed than he did an hour and a half ago, if that were possible. “Thanks,” he manages. “Can you keep an eye out? The monitors might go a little crazy. Either way.”

“Are you sure about this?”

Stiles shrugs. “It’s all I can do. It’s … has he got a chance otherwise?” She doesn’t move, doesn’t even twitch. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“Good luck. I’ll stall everyone for you. Don’t leave a mark we’ll have to explain away.” She kisses his cheek quickly and shoves him through the door, shutting it after them.

Stiles takes a spot on one side of the bed, and Derek goes to the other without prompting. For once, he’s the one to break the silence. “I’ll try to do it where he’s already injured, so the nurses won’t see.” Together, they manage to shove the hospital gown out of the way until they’re looking at the web of stitches from the emergency surgery and bullet extraction. Derek nods at a spot over his heart, and Stiles nods in return, taking his dad’s hand and making sure his body is blocking the view from the door. He feels like he should be talking to his dad, saying goodbyes, maybe, just in case, but there’s time for that while they wait for the bite to take or … not. “You might want to look away,” offers Derek.

“I need to see. I asked you to do it, I’m making the decision, I figure the least I can do is watch.” Derek nods and lowers his head, eyes going red, teeth elongating.

Stiles holds his breath and listens to the beep of the monitors as Derek bends down and bites.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Warnings:** This story deals strongly with potential immediate character death by injury (not explicitly described, either the incident or the injury), and that question is not resolved by the end. It also references past character death of several characters, and contains a character having some symptoms of a panic attack. If you have any more specific questions or concerns (i.e. if I have forgotten a warning you feel should be present), please feel free to contact me.


End file.
